Graduate school

See also

Research at the Department for Continuing Education

The Department has an active interdisciplinary research community, particularly with respect to public engagement and practitioner-based initiatives which build on the research interests of our academic staff and over 80 research students.

Ritual and Religion in Prehistory (Online)

Overview

How can we begin to understand the spiritual lives of people in the distant past? When do religious ideologies first appear on the human evolutionary timescale? How can we recognise and interpret ancient myth and ritual from the burial mounds, temples, art and artefacts left by our prehistoric ancestors? Using key concepts drawn from anthropology, these and many other questions will be examined as we take a global view of the archaeological evidence for prehistoric rituals and religion.

Religion is concerned with an intangible system of belief, whilst archaeology is the interpretation of the past from surviving material evidence, whether in the form of sites or objects. By taking examples from across the world and from different periods of prehistory, we shall examine ways in which tangible archaeological evidence demonstrates ritual activity and sacred tradition. We shall look at rituals of death such as cremation, mummification and cannibalism; shamanistic practices as shown in rock art from Kazakhstan to cave art in France and Spain: fertility cult figurines from Austria to Malta; masks and skulls in ancestor worship; Stonehenge in a ritual landscape; cosmology through the sun cult of Peru to a 7000 year old observatory in Germany. All this and more will be explored and illuminated through the archaeological evidence of past cultures

For information on how the courses work, and a link to our course demonstration site, please click here.

Programme details

Introduction to the study of prehistoric ritual and religion

Defining ritual and religion

The anthropology of religion

The intangible nature of ritual and religion

The multifaceted nature of religions

Excavating prehistoric ritual and religion

The evolution of religion

Evolution of religion timeline

Defining symbolism

The evolution of symbolic behaviour

The evolution of religious behaviour

Mortuary rituals

Inhumation

Excarnation

Cremation

Mummification

The mummies of Cladh Hallan

Mortuary cannibalism

Domestic rituals

The Maori meeting-house

Foundation offerings

The house of the dead

The death of the house

Totemism, animism and shamanism

Totemism

Animism and shamanism

The Upton Lovell shaman

Medicines and narcotics

Bronze Age shamans of Central Asia

Shamans of the Arctic

Fertility cults

Palaeolithic ‘Venus figurines’

Neolithic ‘fertility figurines’

The Mother Goddess in Neolithic Malta

Fertility rituals among the Naga headhunters

Ancestor cults

Archaeology of the Dreaming

Masks and figures

Ancestor cults in prehistory

Landscapes of the ancestors

The island of the ancestors

Case study: Prehistoric ritual and religion at Stonehenge

The Stonehenge landscape

People at Stonehenge

Stones for the ancestors

Midwinter festivals

The ritual settlement at Durrington Walls

Cosmology and astronomy

Prehistoric observatories

The Nebra sky-disc

The Anasazi

The Moundbuilders

Prehistoric astronomy – fact or fiction?

The sun cult in Peru

Deities

Gifts for the gods: votive offerings

Gifts for the gods: human sacrifice

The Bird Goddess

The Snake Goddess

Goddesses of war and hunting

Cernunnos

We strongly recommend that you try to find a little time each week to engage in the online conversations (at times that are convenient to you) as the forums are an integral, and very rewarding, part of the course and the online learning experience.

Recommended reading

To participate in the course you will need to have regular access to the Internet and you will need to buy the following textbook:

Certification

To earn credit (CATS points) for your course you will need to register and pay an additional £10 fee for each course you enrol on. You can do this by ticking the relevant box at the bottom of the enrolment form or when enrolling online. If you do not register when you enrol, you have up until the course start date to register and pay the £10 fee.

Coursework is an integral part of all online courses and everyone enrolled will be expected to do coursework, but only those who have registered for credit will be awarded CATS points for completing work at the required standard. If you are enrolled on the Certificate of Higher Education you need to indicate this on the enrolment form but there is no additional registration fee.

Assignments are not graded but are marked either pass or fail.

All students who successfully complete this course, whether registered for credit or not, are eligible for a Certificate of Completion. Completion consists of submitting both course assignments and actively participating in the course forums. Certificates will be available, online, for those who qualify after the course finishes.

IT requirements

This course is delivered online; to participate you must to be familiar with using a computer for purposes such as sending email and searching the Internet. You will also need regular access to the Internet and a computer meeting our recommended minimum computer specification.